I was wondering recently. There is such a huge scope of how stories are posted and the algorithms that go into it and I understand that. But I have been observing over the past few days how stories are categorized, and I think the system is very old fashioned, broken even.

You still have stories from 6 years ago being recommended because they have millions of views (This is really cool, but also slightly unfair.) These stories have millions of views and people are always clicking on them to read them because they want to see what all the hype is about, so those stories get more and more reads.

I know people don’t have time to search millions of stories, or necessarily the want to search through millions of stories before picking one so normally the curiosity to see what the big deal is can win out in the end.

Have you guys thought about updating the app to make it more accessible to new stories and writers who have no fan base and are suffering from the lack of ability to know how to reach the readers that they could have if they could just find them?

The thing about those stories that are 4-7years old is that back then the site was newer and had much less writing on it. Now it’s like going net fishing in the ocean with a handheld net. The recommendations and explore something different are great sections, but promote stories that already have hundreds of thousands to millions of reads on them(or at least on my page they do).

I was wondering if you guys have thought about scrolling stories the way they do with tv and movie viewing sites, novels are just another form of information and entertainment, I think they could be treated the same way.

This idea would work really well for recommendations and new stories in all categories that way under-appreciated talent and their stories in all categories have a chance to be seen too. I especially think there should be a giant banner type thing scrolling under categories like brand new right now. Hot right now. Stories that Match your reads. New categories like these would be very helpful, and if they scroll through stories, that would be awesome.

I really could not agree more with this post I’m a young author that writes with very little in my favour. To give you an idea of this, I write:

Undertale fanfiction, with no branding, rarely ever upload because of school, have rampant jealousy, and two bouts of stigma. Absolutely nothing works in my favour, and my book only hit 1K a few weeks ago after months upon months upon months of advertisement, and weeks later it’s only gone up by 29 reads.

Believe it or not Wattpad, your stories of great success, of thousands in months, are NOT NORMAL. There are writers like this who are downtrodden by the system. It’s very old fashioned both in terms of the site and in general. It’s next to impossible to succeed on this site for that exact reason, it keeps the WP working class down and elevates the upper class higher and higher.

I really feel like WP should add the ability to exclude certain collections on your home feed and configure them how you like. Similar to filtering out incomplete works in the search, you could set parameters for your personal recommendations

I also saw another awesome suggestion to have an option to disable the read, vote and comment totals. As in make them invisible, I think we’re all in agreeance they’re a lot of what makes this site toxic at times.

Anyways, I really agree with this post and your sentiment. I’m fed up with people accelerating through the site and acting like it’s normal, because it’s not, it just isn’t. Getting 10K in a matter of months isn’t usual. That’s lucky as hell, but oh, does the system care for more vulnerable authors with less to stand on? Hell no.

Things need fixing.

Also, might want to break up the OP or put a TL;DR in… those that argue against this are going to ignore it otherwise… sorry

I use to like how the site looked about a year ago. They suddenly came out with this whole new look and update and I follow the account on Instagram. Whenever they post about a new feature coming to the site or app, the majority of the comments are about how WP seems to be going downhill rather than improving. Even tagging and the search engine for finding stories use to be better in my opinion as well as how the forums looked (it used to be simpler to navigate.)

I don’t really know how the algorithms work, but I honestly believe that WP doesn’t care as much about undiscovered authors as they like to say they do. In the past few months, they have been trying so hard to legitimize their brand as a staple in publishing/traditional book communities rather than being a well working site that allows writers of all types and genres to have their works deservingly recognized. They did form an actual publishing company, which is great. But, I don’t think there are going to be many unique and different stories published through it.

It’s actually starting to become common in traditional YA fiction now too–outside of WP. The WP writing community idea of masculinity is just very exaggerated because most of the other teen writers don’t know how to write nuance.
Not gonna lie, I see the appeal what the general base level of “the possessive bad boy trope” use to be":

A male love interest who is a morally grey character and has the typical masculine traits.

But, the line between developed, masculine characters and borderline abusive guys has blurred tremendously somehow.

And for the female characters, I never really see any character in them at all. The female MCs are usually controlled by the story instead of them controlling the story. They’re given basic traits that are never really fleshed out properly and honestly could be ignored entirely.

The content on this site that is rewarded by the algorithm is not only bad writing but harmful. And, I find it extremely “problematic” (I’d honestly use a stronger word but I’mma keep this as polite as possible) that a site this large–most likely aware of its mainly 13-18 aged users–promotes, and essentially encourages these types of works.

I get that people can write what they want, but WP is one of the biggest online writing communities. Instead of WP having the algorithms throw the same toxic stories in my face, maybe take a bit more responsible with it’s algorithms, like promoting newer, undiscovered unique works at give me something new.

Yeah, tag rankings have been broken for a while. Case and point, period. The main folks who’ve had to suffer from it are the newer writers and the undiscovered writers - people who don’t have a community of active readers that are already at their work. Glitchpad has done the bare minimum, if that, to keep things afloat. I haven’t felt confident enough to update my now paused story because of this issue for a couple months.

And the only way for me to really get any reads now on any of my stories is to interact with the WRITERS here and just hope and pray that some of them check me out. By my frustration, you can guess how well that’s worked. The only way to really get the readers back is for tags to be working. I want this massive hole in Glitchpad’s systems to stop so we can have a semblance of a normal writing platform again.

Based on what has and hasn’t been a priority of HQ, I think you guys are right. I really think they don’t care about the folks at the bottom of the barrel. They’ve got a lot of frustrated innovators down here, and if this home update doesn’t come with actual tag fixes, there’s going to be an uproar, let me tell you.

I really want to get one of my stories ‘Same but Different’ noticed under paid stories. I have seen people will lesser reads and votes. Which is fine. But it is quite frustrating having to wait until someone notices

As an author who does have readers and kind of a fanbase, I must say that, yes, I hate the tags ranking system (miss the old one) and we all know it is broken since forever. I also need to say that, yes, little and new writers need more promotion.

BUT, I am here since late-2015… and I didn’t suffer for a longtime to not having readers. It kind of happenned really fast. So sometimes I cannot help but think “maybe those unnoticed authors are just… not good enought ?” Because every “big” or “sucessful” Wattpad authors started whith 0 follower.

And maybe it will sounds selfish, but I don’t want my stories stop being recommended to new readers even thought they are already “popular”.

There are writers like this who are downtrodden by the system. It’s very old fashioned both in terms of the site and in general. It’s next to impossible to succeed on this site for that exact reason, it keeps the WP working class down and elevates the upper class higher and higher.

So, this statement rubs me the wrong way. I get what you probably meant, but referring to undiscovered writers as “the working class” and popular writers as “the upper class” is a bit problematic.

For one: successful Wattpad writers work very hard to get where they are. Very few people post half a novel and get wildly lucky. Most people with 1M+ reads have completed a novel (or multiple). And while many members of the real-life upper class are born into wealth… every Wattpad author starts with 0 followers. Everyone had to build from the ground up. And even when writers have 1M+ reads and are members of Wattpad’s programs (Stars, Paid, Books), they’re still small authors in the larger ecosystem of the literary world–they’re still hustling hard to follow their dreams.

The algorithms currently in place (especially for tag rankings) do allow “small” stories to rank high. The other day, #1 in Fantasy was a story with fewer than 500 reads. Wether that story will one day reach 1M reads depends on time, quality, and reader interest.

I’m confused by what you’re asking for, honestly. You admit that you don’t brand your work, you write a niche genre, and you rarely upload. Why does Wattpad need to do the work of promoting your content? Would many people actually want to read work that’s unbranded, niche, and rarely updated? Have you considered that many of the writers who are part of “the upper class” are working hard to make their work appealing to readers? Because, ultimately, Wattpad doesn’t determine what gets millions of reads. Readers do.

I completely agree! WP is promoting this toxic behavior- as a teenager I would’ve loved to read about a confident MC. I stopped reading WP for a while because of all the popular (and undoubtedly harmful) books being practically shoved down my throat. I grew tired of the slut-shaming, the body- shaming, and the shaming of other women’s decisions (who weren’t the MC) in general.

I doubt they meant to be problematic. What they meant was that some of these writers are 13 year olds writing about borderline abusive relationships and getting rewarded for it. I think it was a great analogy to compare undiscovered writers to the working class. In the real world, the working class literally sacrifices their body in the process of working whereas the rich do not. They’re not saying the successful writers don’t put any effort into their story, they’re just emphasizing the fact undiscovered writers aren’t being given the same treatment